Click the photo above to view a video clip from the Early Health Initiative Breakout Session at Summit 2006.
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Personal Health Lab
"The principles of early health are an unremitting drive to discover and address the causes of ill health—environmental, lifestyle, or genetic—and to address these causes at the level of the individual before they become debilitating and expensive."
- William Castell, The Wellcome Trust
(2005 Summit Challenge)
Overview
The goal of the Personal Health Lab is to explore the integration of diagnostics, therapeutics, and clinical responses for the prevention, early detection and early treatment of disease.
The Personal Health Lab grew from the idea that William M. Castell, former President and CEO of GE Healthcare and current Chairman of the Wellcome Trust, proposed at the inaugural Pacific Health Summit that decision-makers need metrics to track countries’ progress in adopting preventive health measures. Over time, the Lab evolved to include personal health with a primary focus on personalized medicine. The Lab is designed to facilitate collaborations and provide tools for leaders in the field as well as leverage emerging technologies that allow the medical community to target patients' unique profiles.
Current Activities
The Partnership for Personalized Medicine.
- The Partnership for Personalized Medicine (PPM) is a nonprofit initiative with substantial foundation support whose goal is the development, validation, and clinical application of new molecular diagnostics, designed to improve health outcomes and, importantly, reduce health care costs.
- PPM is led by Dr. Lee Hartwell, President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and 2001 Nobel laureate, Dr. Jeffrey Trent, President and Scientific Director of the Translational Genomics Institute (TGen), and Dr. George Poste, Director of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. The NBR Center for Health and Aging is supporting PPM through research and policy development. For more information please view the following resources:
Targeted, Outcome-Oriented Meetings.
- In October 2007, the NBR Center for Health and Aging and the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences presented a workshop on how traditional approaches to health and medicine could be the key to helping us continue to enjoy the successes of our advancing economies and societies. Sponsored by Coca-Cola’s Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness and Intel, this workshop focused on traditional medicine and systems biology, behavior and technology, and economics and policy. This workshop builds on the Lab’s 2006 publication, Integrating People and Approaches Toward Personal Health. Featured participants included the Chinese Minister of Health, Zhu Chen and Leroy Hood, President of the Institute for Systems Biology. To view a full report of the 2007 Beijing Personal Health workshop please click here.
- At the 2007 Pacific Health Summit Lee Hartwell, President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Co-Chair of the Summit's Steering Committee, presented a workshop on Molecular Diagnostics. The discussion focused on resource allocation in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, as well as on engaging different players in the process, such as physicians, payers, patients, and researchers. Dr. Hartwell’s call to action was to create a new pipeline for diagnostic testing—different from the typical drug pipeline—that would provide a framework for validating, implementing, and approving diagnostics.
Research and Case Studies
- The Lab is currently exploring the integration of diagnostics, therapeutics, and clinical response through targeted research and case studies.
Past Activities
Early Health Initiative (EHI)
- The Early Health Initiative, a project that ran from 2005-2006, focused on metrics that promote and measure early health practices. The EHI focused on three core areas:
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